


One Subtle Change

by ARandomDragon



Series: Under Three Full Moons [1]
Category: Wings of Fire - Tui T. Sutherland
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anyway enough tags read the story now, Author is quite cryptic, But it will make sense later, Diverts quickly, First anything so go easy, Snowball effect, Took too long writing this, new powers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-03-23 12:22:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13787682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ARandomDragon/pseuds/ARandomDragon
Summary: The start of the story of the five dragonets, changed a little bit . . .





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> WOO! First part of this done. First ANYTHING done, in fact. Enjoy the beginning of this story. :)

PROLOGUE

_Six years ago . . ._

A dragon, pale as the sands, waits and guards his greatest treasure. He needs this to work, he needs a purpose. _After all, what’s a flightless dragon got to look for in life?_ , he thinks, but not for long. He buries this thought in the desert of his mind, seeing his companion return through the mountains. Carrying nothing.

Dune panics, and runs to the cave in search of his outcast friend. Really, his _other_ outcast friend. The SeaWing one. They run outside, to where the eggs are soon to hatch, and to the stern face of the returned dragon. “Hvitur is dead. The SkyWing egg with him.”, the returner states, blunt as she could.

“Kestrel . . . We have to complete this prophecy”, Dune says. _Because I_ need _a purpose again_.

“Dune is right. _Five eggs to hatch on brightest night_. Somehow, we need another dragonet to hatch here, on the brightest night.” the SeaWing says, a hint of desperation in his voice.

“Webs, we can’t get back into the Sky Kingdom. They will be on an even greater alert, with one thief already. Besides, they’re _SkyWings_. Even if you could get an egg, you’d never make it back.”

_Kestrel really believes it’s over. I can’t._ “What about Asha?” Dune asks, with no attempt to hide his terror. “The MudWings are allied with the SkyWings, surely she could –

“Asha is dead.” Webs cuts him off. “When I was out, guarding the eggs, she made it with the MudWing, but died soon after. I buried her in the closest patch of dirt I could find.”

Dune’s heart breaks for a moment, until Webs notices his friend’s pain and makes another suggestion:

“The RainWings don’t even count their eggs. We could get a fifth from them”

“I will not raise a RainWing under this mountain.” Kestrel states. “Not without a SkyWing to balance the atrocity of it.” She thunders into the cave behind the boulder, where the five of them were supposed to raise the five prophecy dragonets.

“Maybe Kestrel won’t, but _I_   will, Webs. Go get us our last dragonet, I’ll take the last watch before we go inside.” Dune musters everything he can to look intimidating, guarding the eggs for a final time while Webs flies off to the rainforest. _This RainWing plan_ has _to fulfill the prophecy. For all of our sakes._

––––––––––––––––––––

When Webs returns with the egg, the brightest colored object for a long while in the bleak rocky landscape, Dune is exhausted, and all three of Pyrrhia’s moons are full in the clear night sky. The brightest night has arrived. He lands and delivers the egg to Dune, under the sky, to take its place among the other dragonets of the prophecy.

_So. We have a bloodred MudWing egg, a deep blue SeaWing egg, a bright green RainWing egg, the SandWing egg I found alone, and . . . what looks like a NightWing egg, but it’s turned silver._ _And, wait a minute, it looks like the SandWing egg tried to turn silver too. What’s going on here?_

But there was no time to wonder about silvering eggs, as it was time. The first crack appeared on the first egg to hatch of the dragonets of the prophecy. The MudWing was hatching.

“WAIT!” Dune screams, “Do we have _names_ for all of them?” Dune is frantic and the most anxious he’s been since Hvitur’s death.

“We can name them as they come out, except for the RainWing. I caught a glimpse of their names while I was getting the egg, and the only RainWing-esque name I could think of was this – Glory.” Webs gasps out, beaten by his flight.

“Okay. Glory. And we know possibilities for names for the others, given as they hatch.” Dune is satisfied with this approach, and exited to have a purpose again.

“Speaking of which, here’s the first one!” Webs exclaims as the MudWing egg cracks open entirely, to reveal a rather large hatchling, brown as anything despite his bloodred eggshell. “Clay. We’ll call him Clay.”

“Clay. Fitting, for a MudWing.” Dune sighs and watches, as Clay looks up from the remnants of his eggshell, and immediately goes to egg next to his, Glory’s, and seemingly tries to shatter it with his minuscule claws.

“NO! THIS WILL NOT HAPPEN TO THEM! GET OFF, YOU LITTLE MURDEROUS THING!” Dune practically throws himself at hatchling Clay, as Webs scrambles to get the remaining eggs as far away from the monster as he can.

“You get him INSIDE the cave, I’ll keep the eggs out here. Come back when he’s subdued.” Webs holds the eggs as if they were his own, and places them further from the cave opening, in full view of the sky’s three great eyes.

Inside the cave under the mountain, Dune has to grapple with Clay, eventually throwing him into the river to keep him away from the exit, waking Kestrel and saying “Watch him. Keep him alive, by the three full moons, but don’t let him out. He tried to kill the others as soon as he hatched.” Kestrel obliges, satisfied that at least one of the dragonets seems to have promise as a fighter.

Dune returns to Webs, outside the cave, and sees four hatchlings with him.

A fierce,  _but not murderous,_  deep blue SeaWing. “Tsunami.”

The RainWing, bright as all the birds. “Glory.”

A golden SandWing, without a tail barb, staring at the moons, and at Webs. “Saguaro.”

“No.” Dune replies to the SandWing name. “She’s female, and I knew her mother. Her name is Sunny.”

And the NightWing, invisible if it weren’t for the others, with beautiful silver scales on the underside of his wings.

“I have names for all of them except the NightWing.” Webs halfheartedly says, his attention truly focused on the tiny SeaWing in his arms.

“Starflight. We’ll call him Starflight”. Dune’s eyes fixed on the gold of the SandWing, and on the silver scales at the edge of Starflight’s eyes, shaped like perfect teardrops.

As they bring the dragonets inside the cave under the mountain, to hide for the next eight years, Dune notices one last thing: Starflight isn’t the only one with the silver scales behind his eyes, nor is he alone with his expression. The one with his eyes boring deep into your soul.

Behind the soul-boring eyes of another dragonet gleam silver teardrops. Sunny.


	2. Day 1 - Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY! I'M NOT DEAD! AND THIS STILL EXISTS! WOW!
> 
> NOTE: For clarity's sake, every chapter will be titled chronologically, and I'll try to not have a chapter longer than one day or night, with time skips in between them. With that said, happy reading!

CHAPTER 1

_Six years later. . ._

Clay was ready. At least, he _really_ hoped he was. He’d known this day, today, was coming for a while, ever since Starflight’s vision of the great hulking NightWing, the vision that set this whole plan into motion. This NightWing would visit the cave, and if the dragonets were still there, things would get very bad, very quickly.

He _had_ to be ready. He was the first-hatched and biggest of his friends, and he would do most anything for them. Including trust them with his life and help them to hatch a plan to escape before the NightWing came. That plan would take shape tonight. It was _the_ day, so he had to be ready.

One problem, though, was that he was currently in a not-so-friendly fight with a very big SkyWing guardian who did _not_ know that today was escape day.

“COME ON!” she screamed, at the stalagmite that Clay was trying to hide behind. “I don’t want to have to smash another one, MudWing.”

_I don’t want her to either. It’s never ended well._ Clay thought, his mind shuddering with the memories of other times Kestrel had smashed one of their now-quite-limited cave rock formations. He decided now would be time to abandon his vulnerable cover, so he began to back away from the stalagmite, staying out of Kestrel’s line of sight.

Then, when he thought he was far back enough, he launched himself over the stalagmite to surprise Kestrel and _finally_ convince her that he could be the fighter and aggressor that Dune had seen in him and Kestrel had hoped for, before he and the others escaped that night.

Unfortunately, Clay hit one of his back talons on the stalagmite as he was jumping over it, throwing off his midair balance and forcing him to spring open his wings to regain it. This slowed his jump toward Kestrel, and she was able to knock him away and very quickly breathe a blast of fire at him. Clay had barely enough time to throw his already-singed wings in front of him to protect his face.

“WHAT WAS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE?” she yelled as he pulled himself together. “YOU THINK YOU CAN BE SURPRISING? YOU COULDN’T SURPRISE A SHRUB WITH THAT MOVE!”

_Well, that volume isn’t exactly subtle, either_ , he thought rebelliously at his guardian, bracing himself and his ears for the next phase of Kestrel’s “training”. _At least after this, I won’t have to do it again. I hope._ Despite the prophetic abilities of his NightWing and probably-part-NightWing friends, Clay was still not fully sure that the escape plan would work that night.

“HEY! I’m not through with you yet, MudWing!” Kestrel bellowed from the end of the cave. “Are _all_ of you this slow in battle? Consider your tribe lucky they’re aligned with the SkyWings, else they’d have been driven out of the war faster than a terrified goat sprinting down a mountain”.

Clay hated when she insulted his tribe, despite the high frequency at which she did it. When he was younger, he’d imagine just how wrong he was sure Kestrel must be. _That’s another reason we’re escaping tonight_ , he thought. _Not just to get away from Starflight’s NightWing-of-bad-things, but to get out into the world and save the world_.  

“ _Don’t forget you still have to finish training with Kestrel one last time though_ ", whispered a voice that seemed to come from within and without Clay’s mind simultaneously. However, Clay was entirely unfazed.

_Right. Thanks, Sunny_ , he replied to the voice. Clay began pacing across his end of the cave, trying to figure out how Kestrel would strike next. It nearly never worked though, as the big dragon was _very_ good at being unpredictable in battle. Well, at least against Clay. “You know”, Clay said, “If we didn’t fight at such an _ear melting volume,_ that could – ”

Kestrel interrupted him by charging down the short length of the cave and grabbing Clay’s shoulders, digging in to the spaces between his scales, screaming in his face: “YOU THINK YOUR ENEMY WILL LISTEN TO YOU? NEVER!” Clay wriggled and squirmed in Kestrel’s grip but she held tight. “Why won’t you ever let out the killer we saw when you hatched? I don’t care what your friends say of their _stupid_ visions, I know it’s inside you somewhere. Let. It. OUWWWW – ” Kestrel whirled around to find a tiny golden dragon at her tail, chomping down.

“I’ve told you _over_ and _over_ , Clay’s no monster”, Sunny said. “So has Starflight.” Kestrel’s face leaked rage and smoke, and she tossed Clay into the wall before stomping out of the cave, grumbling curses on the prophetic dragonets.

Clay yelped with the last bit of pain he’d have to endure under Kestrel’s talons. _At least, I really hope that’s it_ , he thought. He started to inspect the day’s bruises and cuts and burns, wincing at the shape he appeared to be in.

“It’s not _that_ bad”, Sunny chimed in, trying to cheer up her friend. “There have definitely been worse days.”

_There have also been better days_ , Clay thought, grimacing as he stood up and prepared to walk out of the barren and blasted training cave.

“Oh don’t be like that”, Sunny teased, reading his pessimistic thought. “Tonight, we get out of here and escape Starflight’s vision. Oooo, maybe I’ll get one as the plan gets underway.” Sunny bounced off into the next cave, excited as always.

Clay steadied himself and slowly walked out of their training cave, to meet his friends.      


End file.
